Erdoğan: Syria operation is Turkey’s response to terrorism

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says the country's coordinated military offensive across the border in Syria is a "response to the threat posed by terror groups" such as ISIL and a group of U.S.-backed Kurdish rebels.

Turkey has been hit by a wave of attacks, some claimed by ISIL, and others by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) since the ceasefire between the group and government has collapsed a year ago. Erdoğan has repeatedly said Ankara considers Kurdish rebels in neighboring Syria and Iraq terrorists that its army will fight just like it does ISIL.

The gloves came off, Erdoğan said, after Sunday's bombing of a wedding party in the border town of Gaziantep, in which at least 51 people were killed and dozens injured.

“This is the end," Erdoğan said, according to report by Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency. "We said it needed to be finished and the process has started this morning at 4.00 a.m. We have to solve the problem.”

Just before dawn Wednesday, Turkey launched airstrikes and fired artillery into Syria. It also sent tanks and hundreds of Western-backed Syrian opposition fighters across the border to oust ISIL militants from the town of Jarablus.

The Syrian Kurdish rebels are led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), an affiliate of the PKK in Turkey. The U.S. and Turkish governments label the PKK as a terrorist group because of its armed fight for autonomy within Turkey.

The U.S. has trained and armed Kurdish PYD fighters in Syria to fight ISIL on the ground, a move Ankara has repeatedly criticized. Turkish officials have asked the Obama administration to cease its support and Turkish army has hit PYD positions in Syria several times before.